November 12 2014

Bit of wind, patch sun…rain, a typical spring day.

Cold November day

I’ve crashed and burned with trying to do too much..so my wonderful husband is giving me a break.
We’ve had some amazing days over the last week

We’ve been planting out our garden slowly. DD is keen to re-vamp her’s…Dave managed to get a heap of lawn mower clipping to mulch.

DS wanted corn in his garden…so one 6cell punnet from hammer hard wear gave us 11 corn plants…yahoo.
Dave and I have decided at this time of our life buying seedlings is the best idea as it takes a lot of time to raise seedlings.
I don’t know how I did it when. Dave was in hospital all that time but I raised seedling, planted out a garden, managed to drive to Auckland several times a week, homeschool the kids…and not panic.
I can’t do that today…odd.

Anyway…took the kids to the beach for homeschool…and Ds decided it was time for a swim.
The weather has been slowly getting worse for a few days…but it’s been like this at this time of year. DD said every year at h/s beach day it’s rained if not hailed. Every year it’s rained on Halloween.

We’ve really made sure we’ve not put in a large lot of seedlings before Halloween as we seem to loose them all.
DD and I have priced up some wood for our next polly tunnels..yahoo.

Also because DD has lost about 4 little chicks now. Too many red mites, not moving the mother hen soon enough…too many eggs.
It’s a hard lesson for a little one but she’s really working hard on this garden chicken thing.

No luck with chicks

Our poor Dd has now lost 4 chicks. We think because of mites.
We need to build a new tunnel coop for the broody hen. Clean!

Spring…

A clean up!
Dave has been doing some amazing work. I’ve been a bit burnt out with winter and school activities.
But feeling the excitement coming back with the change of weather

Spring time… mad

This is Ron the new man on the block.

Well we’ve finally got chicks…we had three of them and sadly one didn’t make it. The kids are super happy to the point they are keen to sell off some of their other chickens which is great as I have no more room…lol.

The Chicks are named…Rosie and Creeper (my son loved minecraft so much)

We’ve been enjoying the sun and the drop in the wind.

Dave has been doing some amazing work on the garden. Paths are mown, Spraying is done and rock walls are going up.

We’ve been planting a few things but not many as we’ve learnt at this time of year you can loose the whole lot with a blast of cold. I’m aiming to build a garden closh which will be 1m wide and 2m long and take one whole bed…just to get it started.

Sort of lost my mojo over the winter break and every seed I tried to grow failed.

Will try again.

Cleaning the water tank

Once a year job. Climb in and scrub out. Kids helped this year

Sun for the last of July

My poor garden is pretty ratty

Silverbeet with holes!

This is really starting to get to me…I can’t find the culprit.
Dave always said it was the chickens
Then we thought it was slugs.
Now I’m thinking wild birds
So possibly a bird scarer?
We’ll see if I can get back to lush leaves again

Our cat

Griffin is the most amazing cat. Lovely with the kids so placid peaceful calm easy.
And now sick 😦
I’ve been so worried all day.
We took him to the vet early in the morning and didn’t get him back till 4:30
Possibly kidney failure
Very very sad